Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BY
CONTENTS.
Habitations affected by environment 473
Rectangular forms developed from circular 475
Flat and terraced roofs developed from sloping mesa-sites 477
Added stories developed from limitations of cliff-house sites 479
Communal pueblos developed from congregation of cliff-house tribes 480
Pottery affected by environment 482
Anticipated by basketry 483
Suggested by clay-lined basketry 485
Influenced by local minerals 493
Influenced by materials and methods used in burning 495
Evolution of forms 497
Evolution of decoration 506
Decorative symbolism 510
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page.
Fig. 490. — A Navajo hut or hogan 473
491. — Perspective view of earliest or Round-house structures of lava 474
492. — Plan of same 475
493. — Section of same 475
494. — Evolution of rectangular forms in primitive architecture 476
495. — Section illustrating evolution of flat roof and terrace 477
496. — Perspective view of a typical solitary-house 478
497. — Plan of a typical solitary-house 478
498. — Typical cliff-dwelling 479
499. — Typical terraced-pueblo—communal type 480
ILLUSTRATIONS. 2
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540. — Section of same as supported on annular mat and wad of soft substance, for drying 504
541. — Modern base-mold as made from the bottom of water jar 504
542. — Example of Pueblo painted-ornamentation illustrating decorative value of open 506
spaces
543 — Amazonian basket-decorations, illustrating evolution of the above characteristic 507
544.
545. — Bowl, showing open or unjoined space in lines near rim 510
546. — Water-jar, showing open or unjoined space in lines near rim 510
547. — Conical or flat-bellied canteen 512
548 — The same, compared with human mammary gland 513
549.
550. — Double-lobed or hunter canteen (Me' wi k`i lik ton ne), showing teat-like 514
projections and open spaces of contiguous lines
551. — Native painting of deer, showing space-line from mouth to heart 515
552. — Native painting of sea serpent, showing space-line from mouth to heart 515
553. — The fret of basket decoration 516
554. — The fret of pottery decoration 516
555. — Scroll as evolved from fret in pottery decoration 516
556. — Ancient Pueblo "medicine-jar" 517
557. — Decoration of above compared with modern Moki rain symbol 517
558. — Zuñi prayer-meal bowl illustrating symbolism in form and decoration 518
559. — Native paintings of sacred butterfly 519
560. — Native painting of sacred migratory "summer bird" 519
561. — Rectangular or Iroquois type of earthen vessel 519
562. — Kidney-shaped type of vessel of Nicaragua 520
563. — Iroquois bark vessel, showing angles of juncture 520
564. — Porcupine quill decoration on bark vessel, for comparison with Fig. 561. 521
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BY FRANK H. CUSHING.
It is apparent at least that they entered the country wherein their remains occur while comparatively a rude
people, and worked out there almost wholly their incipient civilization. Of this there is important linguistic
evidence.
The archaic name for a building or walled inclosure is hé sho ta, a contraction of the now obsolete term, hé
sho ta pon ne, from hé sho, gum, or resin-like; shó tai e, leaned or placed together convergingly; and tá po an
ne, a roof of wood or a roof supported by wood.
In a majority of the lava ruins (for example those occurring near Prescott, Arizona), I have observed that the
sloping sides rather than the level tops of mesa headlands have been chosen by the ancients as building-sites.
Here, the rude, square type of building prevails, not, however, to the entire exclusion of the circular type,
which, is represented by loosely constructed walls, always on the outskirts of the main ruins. The rectangular
rooms are, as a rule, built row above row. Some of the houses in the upper rows give evidence of having
overlapped others below. (See section, Fig. 495.)
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(1) It is quite probable that the overlapping resulted from an increase in the numbers of the ancient builders
relative to available area, this, as in the first instance, leading to a further massing together of the houses. (2) It
suggested the employment of rafters and the formation of the flat roof, as a means of supplying a level
entrance way and floor to rooms which, built above and to the rear of a first line of houses, yet extended
partially over the latter. (3) This is I think the earliest form of the terrace.
ADDED STORIES FOR CLIFF DWELLINGS DEVELOPED FROM LIMITATIONS OF CLIFF-HOUSE SITES.
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To continue, we may see how the necessity for protection would drive the petty clans more and more to the
cliffs, how the latter at every available point would ultimately come to be occupied, and thus how the
"Cliff-dwelling" (see Fig. 498), was confined to no one section but was as universal as the farm-house type of
architecture itself, so widespread, in fact, that it has been heretofore regarded as the monument of a great, now
extinct race of people!
Here, then, in strict accordance with, the teachings of myth, folk-lore and tradition, I have used the linguistic
argument as briefest and most convincing in indicating the probable sequence of architectural types in the
evolution of the Pueblo; from the brush lodge, of which only the name survives, to the recent and present
terraced, many-storied, communal structures, which we may find throughout New Mexico, Arizona, and
contiguous parts of the neighboring Territories.[1]
-482-
On examining a large and varied collection of this pottery, one would naturally regard it either as the product
of four distinct peoples or as belonging to four different eras, with an inclination to the chronologic division.
When we see the reasonable probability that the architecture, the primeval arts and industries, and the culture
of the Pueblos are mainly indigenous to the desert and semi-desert regions of North America, we are in the
way towards an understanding of the origin and remarkable degree of development in the ceramic art.
In these regions water not only occurs in small quantities, but is obtainable only at points separated by great
distances, hence to the Pueblos the first necessity of life is the transportation and preservation of water. The
skins and paunches of animals could be used in the effort to meet this want with but small success, as the heat
and aridity of the atmosphere would in a short time render water thus kept unfit for use, and the membranes
once empty would be liable to destruction by drying. So far as language indicates the character of the earliest
water vessels which to any extent met the requirements of the Zuñi ancestry, they were tubes of wood or
sections of canes. The latter, in ritualistic recitation, are said to have been the receptacles that the
creation-priests filled with the sacred water from the ocean of the cave-wombs of earth, whence men and
creatures were born, and the name for one of these cane water vessels is shó tom me, from shó e, cane or
canes, and tóm me, a wooden tube. Yet, although in the extreme western borders of the deserts, which were
probably the first penetrated by the Pueblos, the cane grows to great size and in abundance along the two
rivers of that country, its use, if ever extensive, must have speedily given way to the use of gourds, which
grew luxuriantly at these places and were of better shapes and of larger capacity. The name of the gourd as a
vessel is shoṕ tom me, from shó e, canes, pó pon nai e, bladder-shaped, and tóm me, a wooden tube; a
seeming derivation (with the exception of the interpolated sound significant of form) from shó tom me. The
gourd itself is called mó thlâ â, "hard fruit." The inference is that when used-483- as a vessel, and called
shoṕ tom me, it must have been named after an older form of vessel, instead of after the plant or fruit
which produced it.
It is readily conceivable that water-tight osiery, once known, however difficult of manufacture, would
displace the general use of gourd-vessels. While the growth of the gourd was restricted to limited areas, the
materials for basketry were everywhere at hand. Not only so, but basket-vessels were far stronger and more
durable, hence more readily transported full of water, to any distance. By virtue of their rough surfaces, any
leakage in such vessels was instantly stopped by a daubing of pitch or mineral asphaltum, coated externally
with sand or coarse clay to harden it and overcome its adhesiveness.
That this clay lining should grow hard from continual heating, and in some instances separate from its matrix
of osiers, is apparent. The clay form thus detached would itself be a perfect roasting-vessel.
Fig. 506.
Sketches illustrating manufacture of spirally-coiled basketry.-487-
Fig. 510.
Fig. 511.
Terraced lozenge decoration, or "double-splint-stitch-forms."
Fig. 512.
Fig. 513.
Double-splint-stitch.
Fig. 516.
Fig. 517.
Perhaps first in importance among these influences was the mineral character of a locality. Where clay
occurred of a fine tough texture, easily mined and manipulated, the work in terra cotta became
proportionately more elaborate in variety and finer in quality. There are to be found about the sites of some
ancient pueblos, potsherds incredibly abundant and indicating great advancement in decorative art, while near
others, architecturally similar, even where evidence of ethnic connection is not wanting, only coarse,
crudely-molded, and painted fragments are discoverable, and these in limited quantity.
An example in point is the ruined pueblo of A' wat u i or Aguatóbi, as it was known to the Spaniards at the
time of the conquest, when it was the leading "city of the Province of Tusayan," now Moki. Over the entire
extent of this ruin, and to a considerable distance around it, fragments of the greatest variety in color, shape,
size, and finish of ware occur in abundance. In the immediate neighborhood, however, are extensive, readily
accessible formations producing several kinds of-494- clay and nearly all the color minerals used in the
Pueblo potter's art. Yet at the greatest ruin on the upper Colorado Chiquito (in an arm of the valley of which
river A' wat ú i itself occurs), where the fallen walls betoken equal advancement in the status of the ancient
builders and indicate by their vast extent many times the population of A' wat u i, the potsherds are coarse,
irregular in curvature, badly decayed, and exceptionally scarce. In the immediate neighborhood of this ruin, I
A more reliable example is furnished by the farming pueblos of Zuñi. At Hé sho ta tsí nan or Ojo del Pescado,
fifteen miles east of Zuñi, clays of several varieties and color minerals are abundant. The finest pottery of the
tribe is made there in great quantity, while, notwithstanding the facilities for transportation which the Zuñis
now possess, at the opposite farming town of K`iáp kwai na kwin, or Los Ojos Calientes, where clay is scarce
and of poor texture, the pottery, although somewhat abundant, is of miserable quality and of bad shape.
In quality of art quite as much as in that of material this local influence was great. In the neighborhood of
ruined pueblos which occur near mineral deposits furnishing a great variety of pigment-material, the
decoration of the ceramic remains is so surprisingly and universally elaborate, beautiful, and varied as to lead
the observer to regard the people who dwelt there as different from the people who had inhabited towns about
the sites of which the sherds show not only meager skill and less profuse decorative variety, but almost typical
dissimilarity. Yet tradition and analogy, even history in rare instances, may declare that the inhabitants of both
sections were of common derivation, if not closely related and contemporaneous. Probably, at no one point in
the Southwest was ceramic decoration carried to a higher degree of development than at A' wat u i, yet the
Oraibes, by descent the modern representatives of the A' wat u i ans are the poorest potters and painters
among the Mokis. Near their pueblo the clay and other mineral deposits mentioned as abundant at A' wat u i
are meager and inaccessible. Still, it may be urged that time may have introduced other than natural causes for
change; this could not be said of another example pertaining to one period and a single tribe. I refer again to
the Zuñis. The manufactures of Pescado probably surpass in decorative excellence all other modern Pueblo
pottery, while both in their lack of variety and in delicacy of execution of their painted patterns the fictiles of
Ojo Caliente are so inferior and diverse from the other Zuñi work that the future archæologist will have need
to beware, or (judging alone from the ceramic remains which he finds at the two pueblos) he will attribute
them at least to distinct periods, perhaps to diverse peoples.
-495-
Only one kind of fuel, except for a single class of vessels, is now used in pottery-firing; namely, dried cakes
or slabs of sheep-dung. Anciently, several varieties, such as extremely dry sage-brush or grease-wood, piñon
and other resinous woods, dung of herbivora when obtainable, charcoal, and also bituminous or cannel-coal
were employed. The principal agent seems, however, to have been dead-wood or spunk, pulverized and
moistened with some adhesive mixture so that flat cakes could be formed of it. I infer this not alone from Zuñi
tradition, which is not ample, but from the fact that the sheep-dung now used is called, in the condition of
fuel, kú ne a, while its name in the abstract or as sheep-dung simply is má he. Dry-rot wood or spunk is
known as kú me. In the shape of flat cakes it would be termed kú mo we or kú me a, whence I doubt not the
modern word kú ne a is derived.
Of methods, four were in vogue. The simplest and worst consisted in burying the vessel to be burned under
hot ashes and building a fire around it, or inverting it over a bed of embers and encircling it with a blazing fire
of brush-wood, as is still the practice of the Maricopas and other sedentary tribes of the Gila. The most
common was building a little cone or dome of fuel over the articles to be baked and firing; the most perfect
was to dig or construct under ground a little cist or kiln, line it evenly with fuel, leaving a central space for the
green ware, and slowly fire the whole mass.
This partially explains why the art of water-tight basket-making has here gradually declined since the Spanish
conquest, as the ceramic industry has increased with the introduction of the sheep, which furnishes fuel for the
burning, and the horse, before unknown, has facilitated transportation, whereby trade for this class of basketry
with the distant nomadic tribes who still make it is rendered easy. Withal, however, the quality of pottery has
not improved, but has deteriorated; as sheep-dung is but an inferior fuel for firing.
-497-
EVOLUTION OF FORMS.
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afterward built up by the spiral process. When in time the huge hemispherical canteens or water carriers of
earthen-ware replaced the basket bottles, so also the water jar or olla replaced the handled sitter or pitcher,
since it could be made larger to receive more copious supplies of water than the strength of the frail handles
on the pitchers would warrant.
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Upon the bottoms of many jars of these forms, I have observed the impressions of the wicker bowls in which
they had been molded—not entirely to be removed, it seems, by the most assiduous smoothing before
burning; for, however smooth any exceptional specimen may appear, a squeeze in plaster will still reveal
traces of these impressions.
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Thus I have thrown together a few conjectures and suggestions relative to the origin of the Southwestern
pottery and the evolution of its principal forms.
-506-
EVOLUTION OF DECORATION
I might go on, appealing to language to account for nearly every variety of pottery found existing as a type
throughout the region referred to; but a subject inseparably connected with this, throwing light on it in many
ways, and possessing in itself great interest, claims treatment on the few remaining pages of this essay. I refer
to the evolution and significance or symbolism of Pueblo ceramic decorations.
Before proceeding with this, however, I must acknowledge that I am as much indebted to the teachings of Mr.
E.B. Tylor, in his remarkable works on Man's Early History and Primitive Culture, to Lubbock, Daniel
Wilson, Evans, and others, for the direction or impetus of these inquiries, as I am to my own observations and
experiments for its development.
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The line of gradual development in ceramic decorations, especially of the symbolic element, treated as a
subject, is wider in its applicability to the study of primitive man, because more clearly illustrative of the
growth of culture. I regret, therefore, that it must here be dealt with only in a most cursory manner. Large
collections for illustration would be essential to a fuller treatment, even were space unlimited.
-507-
Fig. 543.
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Fig. 544.
Amazonian basket decorations.
We cannot explain these characteristics, and the conventional aspect of the higher and symbolic Pueblo
ceramic decorations which grew out of them, in a better way than to suppose them, like the forms of this
pottery, to be the survivals of the influence of basketry. (See, for comparison, Figs. 543, 544.) I shall be
pardoned, therefore, for elaborating suggestions already made in this direction, in the paragraphs which
treated of the ornamentation of spiral ware, and of the derivation of basket decorations from stitch- and
splint-suggested figures. All students of early man understand his tendency to reproduce habitual forms in
accustomed association. This feeling, exaggerated with savages by a belief in the actual relationship of
resemblance, is shown in the reproduction of the decorations of basket vessels on the clay vessels made from
them or in imitation of them.
In entire conformity with this, the succession in the methods of the ornamentation of Pueblo pottery seems to
have been first by incision or indentation; then by relief; afterward by painting in black on a natural or light
surface; finally, by painting in color on a white or colored surface.
As before suggested, the patterns on the coiled, regularly indented pottery (which came to be first known to
the world as a type, the "corrugated," through the earlier explorations and reports of Mr. William H. Holmes)
were produced simply by emphasized indentation, more rarely by incision, and were almost invariably
angular, reproducing exactly the designs on wicker work. Even in comparatively recent examples of the
corrugated ware this is true; for, once connected with a type, a style of decoration, both seem to have been
ever after inseparable, with at most but slight modification of the latter. One of these modifications, in both
method and effect, was in the adoption of the raised or-508- relief style of ornamentation found, with rare
exceptions in the Southwest, only on corrugated ware, and on the class which in modern times has replaced it
there, vessels used in cookery. Although never universal, this style deserves passing attention as the outgrowth
of an effort to attain the effect of contrast produced by dyed or painted splints on wicked work before the use
of paint was known in connection with pottery. The same kind of investigation indicates that the Pueblos
largely owed their textile industries and designs, as well as their potter's art, to the necessity which gave rise to
the making of water-tight basketry. The terms connected with the rudimentary processes of weaving and
embroidery, and the principal patterns of both (on, for example, blankets, kirtles, sacred girdles, and women's
belts), are mostly susceptible of interpretation, like the terms in pottery, as having a meaning connected with
the processes of basket plaiting and painting. This renders the conventional character of Pueblo textile
ornaments easy of comprehension, as well, as the very early, if not the earliest, origin of loom-weaving among
our Indians in the desert regions of America.
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Henceforward, then, we have only to consider decoration by painting. The probability is that this began as
soon as the smooth surface in pottery was generally made; evidence of which seemingly exists; as eating
bowls are, even to the present day, decorated principally on the interior; not, as may be supposed, because the
exterior is more hidden from view, but because, as we have seen on a former page, bowls were made plain
inside before the corrugated type formed on basket bottoms had been displaced by the smoothed type; and
were naturally first decorated there with paint. It must be constantly borne in mind that a style of decoration
once coupled with a kind of ware, or even a portion of a vessel, retained its association permanently.
It must have been early observed that clay of one kind, applied even thinly to the exterior of a vessel of
another kind, produced, when burned, a different color. With the discovery that clays of different kinds burned
in a variety of colors, to some extent irrespective of the methods and the materials used in firing, there must
likewise have been hinted, we may safely conclude, the efficacy of clay washes as paint, and of paint as a
decorative agent.
Among the ceramic remains from the oldest pueblo sites of the Southwest, pottery occurs, mostly in four
varieties: the corrugated or spiral; the plain, yet rough gray; white decorated with geometric figures in black;
and red, either plain or decorated with geometric devices in black and white. The gray or dingy brown, rough
variety, resulted when a corrugated or coiled jar had been simply smoothed with the fingers and scraper before
it was fired. A step in advance, easily and soon taken, was the additional smoothing of the vessel by slightly
wetting and rubbing its outer surface. Even this was productive only of a moderately smooth surface, since, as
learned by the Indian potters long before, in their experience with the clay-plastered parching-tray,-509- it was
necessary to mix the clay of vessels with a tempering of sand, crushed potsherds, or the like, to prevent it from
cracking while drying; this, of course, no amount of rubbing would remove. Hence, by another easy step, clay
unmixed with a grit-tempering, made into a thin paste with water, and thickly applied to the half-dried jar with
a dab or brash of soft fiber, gave a beautifully smooth surface, especially if polished afterward by rubbing
with water-worn pebbles. The vessel thus prepared, when burned, assumed invariably a creamy, pure white,
red-brown or, other color, according to the quality or kind of the clay used in making the paste with which it
had been smoothed or washed.
Thus was achieved the art of producing at will fictiles of different colors, with which simple suggestion
painting also became easy. Black, aside from clay paste, was almost the first pigment discovered; quite likely
because the mineral blacks from iron ores, coal, and the various rocks used universally among Indians for
staining splints, etc., would be the earliest tried, and then adopted, as they remained unchanged by firing. Thus
it came about, as evidenced by the sequence of early remains in the Southwest, that the white and black
varieties of pottery were the first made, then the red and black, and later the red with white and black
decoration. Take, as an example, the latter. Of course it was a simple mode to employ the red (ocherous) clay
for the wash, the blue clay (which burned white) for the white pigment in making lines, and any of the black
minerals above mentioned for other marking.
In these earliest kinds of painted pottery the angular decorations of the corrugated ware or of basketry were
repeated, or at the farthest only elaborated, although on some specimens the suggestions of the curved
ornament already occurred. These resulted, I may not fear to claim, from carelessness or awkwardness in
drawing, for instance, the corners of acute angles, which, "cutting across-lot" would, it may be seen, produce
the wavy or meandering line from the zigzag, the ellipsoid from the rectangle, and so on.
Precisely in accordance with this theory were the studies of my preceptor, the lamented Prof. Charles Fred.
Hartt. In a paper "On Evolution in Ornament," published in several periodicals, among them the Popular
Science Monthly of January, 1875, this gifted naturalist illustrated his studies by actual examples found on
decorated burial urns from Marajó Island. I must take the liberty of suggesting, however, that upon some
antecedent kind of vessel, the eyes of the Amazonian Islanders may have been, to give Professor Hartt's idea,
"trained to take physiological and æsthetic delight in regularly recurring lines and dots"; not on the pottery
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itself, as he seemed to think, for decoration was old in basketry and the textiles when pottery was first made.
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DECORATIVE SYMBOLISM.
Fig. 545.—Food-bowl.
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question arises how did these people come to regard food-receptacles or water-receptacles as possessed of or
accompanied by conscious existences. I have found that the Zuñi argues actual and essential relationship from
simi-511-larity in the appearance, function, or other attributes of even generically diverse things.[2]
I here allude to this mental bias because it has both influenced the decoration of pottery and has been itself
influenced by it. In the first place, the noise made by a pot when struck or when simmering on the fire is
supposed to be the voice of its associated being. The clang of a pot when it breaks or suddenly cracks in
burning is the cry of this being as it escapes or separates from the vessel. That it has departed is argued from
the fact that the vase when cracked or fragmentary never resounds as it did when whole. This vague existence
never cries out violently unprovoked; but it is supposed to acquire the power of doing so by imitation; hence,
no one sings, whistles, or makes other strange or musical sounds resembling those of earthenware under the
circumstances above described during the smoothing, polishing, painting, or other processes of finishing. The
being thus incited, they think, would surely strive to come out, and would break the vessel in so doing. In this
we find a partial explanation of the native belief that a pot is accompanied by a conscious existence. The rest
of the solution of this problem in belief is involved in the native philosophy and worship of water. Water
contains the source of continued life. The vessel holds the water; the source of life accompanies the water,
hence its dwelling place is in the vessel with the water. Finally, the vessel is supposed to contain the treasured
source, irrespective of the water—as do wells and springs, or even the places where they have been. If
the encircling lines inside of the eating bowl, outside of the water jar, were closed, there would be no exit trail
for this invisible source of life or for its influence or breath. Yet, why, it maybe asked, must the source of life
or its influence be provided with a trail by which to pass out from the vessel? In reply to this I will submit two
considerations. It has been stated that on the earliest Southwestern potteries decoration was effected by incised
or raised ornamentation. Any one who has often attempted to make vessels according to primitive methods as
I have has found how difficult it is to smoothly join a line incised around a still soft clay pot, and that this
difficulty is even greater when the ornamental band is laid on in relief. It would be a natural outgrowth of this
predicament to leave the ends unjoined, which indeed the savage often did. When paint instead of incision or
relief came to be the decorative agent, the lines or bands would be left unjoined in imitation. As those
acquainted with Tylor's "Early History" will realize, and myth of observation like the above would come to be
assigned in after ages.-512- This may or may not be true of the case in question; for, as before observed, some
classes of sacred receptacles, as well as the most ancient painted bowls, are not characterized by the unjoined
lines. Whether true or not, it is an insufficient solution of the problem.
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woman supposes that by closing the apex of this artificial mamma she closes the exit-way for the "source of
life;" further, that the woman who closes this exit-way knowingly (in her own sight, that is) voluntarily closes
the exit-way for the source of life in her own mammæ; further still, that for this reason the privilege of bearing
infants may be taken away from her, or at any rate (experience showing the fallacy of this philosophy) she
deserves the loss of the sense (sight) which enabled her to "knowingly" close the exit-way of the source of life.
Fig. 548.
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Fig. 549.
Conical canteen compared with human mammary gland.
By that tenacity of conservative reasoning which is a marked mental characteristic of the sedentary Pueblo,
other types of the canteen, of later origin, not only retained the name-root of this primeval form, but also its
attributed functions. For example, the me' wi k`i lik ton ne (See Fig. 550) is named thus from me we,
mammaries, i kí lïk toì e', joined together by a neck, and to'm me.
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Now, when closing the ends (Fig. 550, c, c) of this curious vessel in molding it, the women are as careful to
turn the eyes away as in closing the apex of the older form. As the resemblance of either of the ends of this
vessel to the mamma is not striking, they place on either side of the nozzle a pair of little conical projections,
resembling the teats, and so called. (Fig. 550, b.) There are four of these, instead of, as we might reasonably
expect, two. The reason for this seems to be that the me' wi k´i lik ton ne is the canteen designed for use by the
hunter in preference to all other vessels, because it may be easily wrapped in a blanket and tied to the back.
Other forms would not do, as the hunter must have the free use not only of his hands but also of his head, that
he may turn quickly this way or that in looking for or watching game. The proper nourishment of the hunter is
the game he kills; hence, the source of his life, like that of the young of this game, is symbolized in the
canteen by the mammaries, not of human beings, but of game-animals. A feature in these canteens dependent
upon all this brings us nearer to an understanding of the question under discussion. When ornamental bands
are painted around either end of the neck of one of them (Fig. 550, b), they are interrupted at the little
projections (Fig. 550, b,). Indeed, I have observed specimens on which these lines, if placed farther out, were
interrupted at the top (Fig. 550, a a) opposite the little projections. So, by analogy, it would seem the Pueblos
came to regard paint, like clay, a barrier to the exit of the source of life. This idea of the source of life once
associated with the canteen would readily become connected with the water-jar, which, if not the offspring of
the canteen, at least usurped its place in the household economy of these people. From the water-jar it would
pass naturally to drinking-vessels and eating-bowls, explaining the absence of the interrupted lines on the
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Study of Pueblo Pottery, by Frank Hamilton Cushing.
oldest of these and their constant occurrence on recent and modern examples; for the painted lines being left
open at the apexes, or near the projections on the canteens, they should also be unjoined on other vessels with
which the same ideas were associated.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Study of Pueblo Pottery, by Frank Hamilton Cushing.
subjects not at sight related to the one in hand, that I must hasten to present two other points.
Much wonder has been expressed that the Pueblos, so advanced in pottery decoration, have not attempted
more representations of natural objects. There is less ground for this wonder than at first appears. It should be
remembered that the original angular models which the Pueblo had, out of which to develop his art,
bequeathed to him an extremely conventional conception of things. This, added to his peculiar way of
interpreting relationship and personifying phenomena and even functions, has resulted in making his
depictions obscure. In point of fact, in the decoration of certain classes of his pottery he has attempted the
reproduction of almost everything and of every phenomenon in nature held as sacred or mysterious by him.
On certain other classes he has developed, imitatively, many typical decorations which now have no special
symbolism, but which once had definite significance; and, finally, he has sometimes relegated definite
meanings to designs which at first had no significance, except as decorative agents, after ward using them
according to this interpretation in his attempts to delineate natural objects, their phenomena, and functions. I
will illustrate by examples, the last point first.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Study of Pueblo Pottery, by Frank Hamilton Cushing.
and scrolls or volutes yards long and as regular as though drawn by a skilled artist.-516- The circles are made
by the wind driving partly broken weed-stalks around and around their places of attachment, until the fibers
by which they are anchored sever and the stalks are blown away. The volutes are formed by the stems of
red-top grass and of a round-topped variety of the chenopodium, drifted onward by the whirlwind yet around
and around their bushy adhesive tops. The Pueblos, observing these marks, especially that they are abundant
after a wind storm, have wondered at their similarity to the painted scrolls on the pottery of their ancestors.
Even to-day they believe the sand marks to be the tracks of the whirlwind, which is a God in their mythology
of such distinctive personality that the circling eagle is supposed to be related to him. They have naturally,
therefore, explained the analogy above noted by the inference that their ancestors, in painting the volute, had
intended to symbolize the whirlwind by representing his tracks. Thenceforward the scroll was drawn on
certain classes of pottery to represent the whirlwind, modifications of it (for instance, by the color-sign
belonging to any one of the "six regions") to signify other personified winds. So, also, the semicircle is
classed as emblematic of the rainbow (a' mi to lan ne); the obtuse angle, as of the sky (a' po yan ne); the
zigzag line as lightning (wi' lo lo an ne); terraces as the sky horizons (a'wi thlui a we), and modi-517-fications
of the latter as the mythic "ancient sacred place of the spaces" (Te' thlä shi na kwïn), and so on.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Study of Pueblo Pottery, by Frank Hamilton Cushing.
which the jar was an appurtenance.
Thus, upon all sacred vessels, from the drums of the esoteric medicine societies of the priesthood and all vases
pertaining to them to the keramic appurtenances of the sacred dance or Kâ' kâ, all decorations were
intentionally emblematic. Of this numerous class of vessels, I will choose but one for illustration—the
prayer-meal-bowl of the Kâ' kâ.-518- In this, both form and ornamentation are significant. (See Fig. 558.) In
explaining how the form of this vessel is held to be symbolic I will quote a passage from the "creation myth"
as I rendered it in an article on the origin of corn, belonging to a series on "Zuñi Breadstuff," published this
year in the "Millstone" of Indianapolis, Indiana. "Is not the bowl the emblem of the earth, our mother? For
from her we draw both food and drink, as a babe draws nourishment from the breast of its mother; and round,
as is the rim of a bowl, so is the horizon, terraced with mountains whence rise the clouds." This alludes to a
medicine bowl, not to one of the handled kind, but I will apply it as far as it goes to the latter. The two terraces
on either side of the handle (Fig. 558, a a) are in representation of the "ancient sacred place of the spaces," the
handle being the line of the sky, and sometimes painted with the rainbow figure. Now the decorations are a
trifle more complex. We may readily perceive that they represent tadpoles (Fig. 558, b b), dragonflies (Fig
558, c c), with also the frog or toad (Fig. 558); all this is of easy interpretation. As the tadpole frequents the
pools of spring time he has been adopted as the symbol of spring rains; the dragon-fly hovers over pools in
summer, hence typifies the rains of summer; and the frog, maturing in them later, symbolizes the rains of the
later seasons; for all these pools are due to rain fall. When, sometimes, the figure of the sacred butterfly (see
Fig. 559, a b) replaces that of the dragon-fly, or alternates with it, it symbolizes the beneficence of summer;
since, by a reverse order of reasoning, the Zuñis think that the butterflies and migratory birds (see Fig. 560)
DECORATIVE SYMBOLISM. 54
The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Study of Pueblo Pottery, by Frank Hamilton Cushing.
A general examination, even of the most modern of Pueblo pottery,-519- shows us that certain types of
decoration have once been confined to certain types of vessels, all which has its due signification but an
examination of which would properly form the subject of another essay.
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whether they had, like some of the Central Americans, (to make a concrete example and judge it by this
method) apparently immigrated in part from desert North America, in part from the wilderness of an
equatorial region in South America.
Footnotes
[1] See for confirmation the last Annual Report to the Archæological Institute of America, by Adolph F.
Bandelier, one of the most indefatigable explorers and careful students of early Spanish history in America.
[2] I would refer those, who may wish to find this characteristic more fully set forth, to the introductory pages
of my essay on Zuñi Fetiches, published in the second volume of Contributions to North American Ethnology
by the Bureau of Ethnology; also to a paper read before the American Academy of Sciences on the Relations
to one another of the Zuñi Mythologic and Sociologic Systems, published, I regret to say, without my
revision, in the Popular Science Monthly, for July, 1882.
INDEX
• Awatui pottery 493
•
• Basketry anticipated pottery 483-485
• Basketry cooking utensils 484-486
• Basketry declined, Manufacture of watertight 496
• Boiling basket 485
• Burning influence pottery, Materials and methods used in 495, 496
•
• Cane tubes to carry water 482
• Cliff-dwellings 478, 479-480
• Coal used in pottery firing, Mineral 495-496
• Coiled pottery, how made 500
• Communal Pueblos 480, 481
•
• Environments affecting habitations 473
• Environments affecting pottery 482
•
• Flat and terraced roofs 477
• Form evolved in pottery from basketry 497
• Fuel used in pottery firing 495
•
• Gourd vessels to carry water 482, 483
•
• Habitations affected by environment 473
• Hogan, or hut, Navajo 473
• Houses built near water, Pueblo 477
•
• Lava inclosure earliest form of Navajo hut 475
• Linguistic indications as to habitations 474
• Linguistic indications as to primitive water vessels 482
•
• Mindeleff, Victor, on development of rectangular architecture 475
• Minerals influencing pottery 493
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• Mode of making pottery vessels 499-500
• Moki pottery 493
•
• Navajo hogan, or hut 473
•
• Ojo Caliente pottery 491
• Ollas 498, 500
• Ornament, Ceramic 488
• Ornamentation of coiled basketry 487
•
• Pescado pottery 494
• Pottery affected by environment 482
• Pottery anticipated by basketry 483-485
• Pottery declined in quality with introduction of domestic animals 496
• Pottery developed from basketry 485
• Pueblo primitive habitations 475
• Pueblos, Communal 480, 481
•
• Rectangular forms developed from circular in architecture 475
• Roasting tray 484
•
• Stories added in cliff-buildings 479
•
• Tusayan, Province of 493
•
• Water important to Pueblos, Transportation and preservation of 482
• Wicker cover for gourd vessels 483
•
• Zuñi priests' journey to the Atlantic 483
• Zuñi skill on water jars 498, 500
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